Ariana Grande Can't Watch ‘The Waterboy’ Without Crying
Because the world is a cruel place to beautiful souls like Adam Sandler, Ariana Grande can’t get through The Waterboy without some waterworks.
On paper, the story of The Waterboy and Bobby Boucher is practically a tragedy — a young man grows up in a repressive religious household raised by a traumatized and manipulative single mother, and his only escape from this rural, swampy poverty is through channeling his deep-seated pain and rage into physical violence that’s exploited for entertainment purposes.
Honestly, a critical read of the Sandler classic could interpret The Waterboy as an indictment of America’s obsession with violence, our insufficient education system and the controlling nature of fundamentalist Christianity in rural communities.
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Maybe that’s why the pop star Grande weeps when she sees Boucher victimized onscreen, as she revealed in a recent interview clip that demands a watch after Nikki Glaser made beautiful celebrities doing Sandler impressions in-vogue on Sunday night:
Usually when someone says that an Adam Sandler movie makes them cry, they’re talking about the ending of Click, or, maybe if they’re a romantic, they’re referring to Sandler’s stellar performance in Punch Drunk Love. Or, possibly, the weeper has in-laws who are somehow obsessed with the Grown Ups movies and they’re forced to watch a demoralizing double feature every time they come over for Thanksgiving.
But, no, for Grande, the real Sandler tearjerker is the story of Bobby Boucher and the South Central Louisiana State University Mud Dogs. And, honestly, she has a point. For all his limitations and eccentricities, Boucher just wants acceptance and friends, but he’s beset on all sides by liars, manipulators and abusers, even including his loved ones. Between Mama and Coach Klein, Bobby doesn’t have a single parental figure who puts his needs above their own selfish desires and insecurities, and he desperately needs a friend who won’t tell him to “get away from me.”
Maybe this fixation on Bobby Boucher’s pure soul is what drove Grande to date Pete Davidson — she could have seen him as the tattooed, weed-smoking, Millennial generation’s Adam Sandler, and something deep in her medulla oblongata told her to be his Vicky Vallencourt.
